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“Did you see anyone? Talk to somebody, maybe? I just want to place you, track your movements. Let me help you.”
Help me what?
Do I tell her?
A voice inside, sensible, urged me to ask for counsel, to see if I could get out and away from her and her questions. I knew enough about police procedure from countless books and crime documentaries and podcasts to know that the police often weren’t seeking the truth, but looking to close a case with any person who fit.
I fit.
I knew it.
Hopelessness caused me to answer, my voice coming out in a flat monotone. “Hunter. Hunter Graves.”
“And who was he?”
It was time, I guess, to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
God help me.
“Hunter Graves came to me last summer.” And I went on, rolling out the story in bursts as I thought of various details, but moving back and forth in time, starting with Jeb’s abduction. I even added what I’d learned from Hunter—how he and Jeb had been Keith Walker’s prime fodder for human trafficking. I told her how the pair of them eventually split—a sort of yin and yang, where one was a victim and the other became a villain.
“I suppose they both dealt with the horror of what happened to them in their own ways.”
I shuddered as something occurred to me—was Hunter wrong? Was Jeb still alive? Really, Hunter had only an assumption to go on. At least that was what he led me to believe.
And if Hunter was wrong and Jebwasstill alive…
“Mr. Blake? Sam? Do you want to answer the question?” Detective Cawood stared at me. I felt as though I’d just swam up to the surface from a dream—or a nightmare.
“I’m sorry. What?”
“I asked if you could give me contact information for this—” She interrupted herself to peek at her notes. “This Hunter Graves.”
“I only know his name. I don’t know where he is.” I did wonder if he was staying at the shithole on the southside—Keith Walker’s last known address. I’d already told her about my trip down there and now, I suggested it could be worth checking into. I took out my phone and scrolled through my email until I found the information the private detective I’d hired, Harriet McGill, had given me a few weeks ago. I opened her attachment and found the address and gave it to Cawood.
She jotted it down. “Thanks. We’ll see if this leads anywhere.”
We fell silent. I looked down at my phone and was stunned to see I’d already been here more than two hours.
Weariness washed over me. I thought of Vito, who was probably going nuts with his need to go outside. He rarely had accidents, but even if I were to leave and go home in a few minutes, it would still take me another couple of hours to get to him.
Marc was there, pressing at the edges of my consciousness and begging me to recognize, to see and absorb, his death. Grief waited for me. “Are we all done here, then?”
Detective Cawood glanced at her watch. “Mr. Blake, I’d really like to keep you here a little while longer. What I want to do is take a break and check out the things you told me—see if we can find any information on this Keith Walker, on Jeb Kleber, and on Hunter Graves. They might be linked to your husband’s murder. They might not be. But I agree, the circumstances are very unusual and suspicious.” She leaned forward. “I’ll be upfront with you. You’re now what we call a ‘person of interest’ and that means I need to make sure, before I can release you, that I don’t need anything more from you.”
“And what if you don’t release me? What if the questions just keep coming?” I gulped. “And the suspicions? What then? Arrest me?”
She raised a not-so-placating hand toward me. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, okay? You’re not a suspect. And if you really need to leave, then go. If you want an attorney, then by all means, call one.”
“You think I need one?”
“I can’t advise you on that.”
“So, I can just go. I have a dog at home that needs me.”
My last statement elicited a smile, which vanished as abruptly as it had come. “Do you have someone you can call who can check on your dog?”
I shook my head.
